by Ellen Wood
In her perturbed haste, she had fastened her dress all awry, and had to undo it again. The thought that she might be keeping them waiting breakfast — which was to be taken that morning a quarter of an hour earlier than usual — did not tend to expedite her. Lucy thought of the old proverb: “The more haste, the less speed.”
“How I wish I dare ask him to come sooner than that to see us! But he might think it strange. I wonder he should not come! there’s Christmas, there’s Easter, and he must have holiday then. A whole year, perhaps more; and not to see him!”
She passed out of the room and descended, her soft skirts of pink-shaded cashmere sweeping the staircase. You saw her in it the evening she first came to Lady Verner’s. It had lain by almost ever since, and was now converted into a morning dress. The breakfast-room was empty. Instead of being behind her time, Lucy found she was before it. Lady Verner had not risen; she rarely did rise to breakfast; and Decima was in Lionel’s room, busy over some of his things.
Lionel himself was the next to enter. His features broke into a glad smile when he saw Lucy. A fairer picture, she, Mr. Lionel Verner, than even that other vision of loveliness which your mind has been pleased to make its ideal — Sibylla!
“Down first, Lucy!” he cried, shaking hands with her. “You wish me somewhere, I dare say, getting you up before your time.”
“By how much — a few minutes?” she answered, laughing. “It wants twenty minutes to nine. What would they have said to me at the rectory, had I come down so late as that?”
“Ah, well, you won’t have me here to torment you to-morrow. I have been a trouble to you, Lucy, take it altogether. You will be glad to see my back turned.”
Lucy shook her head. She looked shyly up at him in her timidity; but she answered truthfully still.
“I shall be sorry; not glad.”
“Sorry! Why should you be sorry, Lucy?” and his voice insensibly assumed a tone of gentleness. “You cannot have cared for me; for the companionship of a half-dead fellow, like myself!”
Lucy rallied her courage. “Perhaps it was because you were half dead that I cared for you,” she answered.
“I suppose it was,” mused Lionel, aloud, his thoughts cast back to the past. “I will bid you good-bye now, Lucy, while we are alone. Believe me that I part from you with regret; that I do heartily thank you for all you have been to me.”
Lucy looked up at him, a yearning, regretful sort of look, and her eyelashes grew wet. Lionel had her hand in his, and was looking down at her.
“Lucy, I do think you are sorry to part with me!” he exclaimed.
“Just a little,” she answered.
If you, good, grave sir, had been stoical enough to resist the upturned face, Lionel was not. He bent his lips and left a kiss upon it.
“Keep it until we meet again,” he whispered.
Jan came in while they were at breakfast.
“I can’t stop a minute,” were his words when Decima asked him why he did not sit down. “I thought I’d run up and say good-bye to Lionel, but I am wanted in all directions. Mrs. Verner has sent for me, and there are the regular patients.”
“Dr. West attends Mrs. Verner, Jan,” said Decima.
“He did,” replied Jan. “It is to be myself, now. West is gone.”
“Gone!” was the universal echo. And Jan gave an explanation.
It was received in silence. The rumours affecting Dr. West had reached Deerham Court.
“What is the matter with Mrs. Verner?” asked Lionel. “She appeared as well as usual when I quitted her last night.”
“I don’t know that there’s anything more the matter with her than usual,” returned Jan, sitting down on a side-table. “She has been going in some time for apoplexy.”
“Oh, Jan!” uttered Lucy.
“So she has, Miss Lucy — as Dr. West has said. I have not attended her.”
“Has she been told it, Jan?”
“Where’s the good of telling her?” asked Jan. “She knows it fast enough. She’d not forego a meal, if she saw the fit coming on before night. Tynn came round to me, just now, and said his mistress felt poorly. The Australian mail is in,” continued Jan, passing to another subject.
“Is it?” cried Decima.
Jan nodded.
“I met the postman as I was coming out, and he told me. I suppose there’ll be news from Fred and Sibylla.”
After this little item of information, which called the colour into Lucy’s cheek — she best knew why — but which Lionel appeared to listen to impassively, Jan got off the table —
“Good-bye, Lionel,” said he, holding out his hand.
“What’s your hurry, Jan?” asked Lionel.
“Ask my patients,” responded Jan, “I am off the first thing to Mrs. Verner, and then shall take my round. I wish you luck, Lionel.”
“Thank you, Jan,” said Lionel. “Nothing less than the woolsack, of course.”
“My gracious!” said literal Jan. “I say, Lionel, I’d not count upon that. If only one in a thousand gets to the woolsack, and all the lot expect it, what an amount of heart-burning must be wasted.”
“Right, Jan. Only let me lead my circuit and I shall deem myself lucky.”
“How long will it take you before you can accomplish that?” asked Jan. “Twenty years?”
A shade crossed Lionel’s countenance. That he was beginning late in life, none knew better than he. Jan bade him farewell, and departed for Verner’s Pride.
Lady Verner was down before Lionel went. He intended to take the quarter-past ten o’clock train.
“When are we to meet again?” she asked, holding her hand in his.
“I will come home to see you soon, mother.”
“Soon! I don’t like the vague word,” returned Lady Verner. “Why cannot you come for Christmas?”
“Christmas! I shall scarcely have gone.”
“You will come, Lionel?”
“Very well, mother. As you wish it, I will.”
A crimson flush — a flush of joy — rose to Lucy’s countenance. Lionel happened to have glanced at her. I wonder what he thought of it!
His luggage had gone on, and he walked with a hasty step to the station. The train came in two minutes after he reached it. Lionel took his ticket, and stepped into a first-class carriage.
All was ready. The whistle sounded, and the guard had one foot on his van-step, when a shouting and commotion was heard. “Stop! Stop!” Lionel, like others, looked out, and beheld the long legs of his brother Jan come flying along the platform. Before Lionel had well known what was the matter, or had gathered in the hasty news, Jan had pulled him out of the carriage, and the train went shrieking on without him.
“There goes my luggage, and here am I and my ticket!” cried Lionel. “You have done a pretty thing, Jan. What do you say?”
“It’s all true, Lionel. She was crying over the letters when I got there. And pretty well I have raced back to stop your journey. Of course you will not go away now. He’s dead.”
“I don’t understand yet,” gasped Lionel, feeling, however, that he did understand.
“Not understand,” repeated Jan. “It’s easy enough. Fred Massingbird’s dead, poor fellow; he died of fever three weeks after they landed; and you are master of Verner’s Pride.”
CHAPTER XXX.
NEWS FROM AUSTRALIA.
Lionel Verner could scarcely believe in his own identity. The train, which was to have contained him, was whirling towards London; he, a poor aspirant for future fortune, ought to have been in it; he had counted most certainly to be in it; but here was he, while the steam of that train yet snorted in his ears, walking out of the station, a wealthy man, come into a proud inheritance, the inheritance of his fathers. In the first moment of tumultuous thought, Lionel almost felt as if some fairy must have been at work with a magic wand.
It was all true. He linked his arm within Jan’s, and listened to the recital in detail. Jan had found Mrs. Verner, on his arrival
at Verner’s Pride, weeping over letters from Australia; one from a Captain Cannonby, one from Sibylla. They contained the tidings that Frederick Massingbird had died of fever, and that Sibylla was anxious to come home again.
“Who is Captain Cannonby?” asked Lionel of Jan.
“Have you forgotten the name?” returned Jan. “That friend of Fred Massingbird’s who sold out, and was knocking about London; Fred went up once or twice to see him. He went to the diggings last autumn, and it seems Fred and Sibylla lighted on him at Melbourne. He had laid poor Fred in the grave the day before he wrote, he says.”
“I can scarcely believe it all now, Jan,” said Lionel. “What a change!”
“Ay. You won’t believe it for a day or two. I say, Lionel, Uncle Stephen need not have left Verner’s Pride to the Massingbirds; they have not lived to enjoy it. Neither need there have been all that bother about the codicil. I know what.”
“What?” asked Lionel, looking at him; for Jan spoke significantly.
“That Madam Sibylla would give her two ears now to have married you, instead of Fred Massingbird.”
Lionel’s face flushed, and he replied coldly, hauteur in his tone, “Nonsense, Jan! you are speaking most unwarrantably. When Sibylla chose Fred Massingbird, I was the heir to Verner’s Pride.”
“I know,” said Jan. “Verner’s Pride would be a great temptation to Sibylla; and I can but think she knew it was left to Fred when she married him.”
Lionel did not condescend to retort. He would as soon believe himself capable of bowing down before the god of gold, in a mean spirit, as believe Sibylla capable of it. Indeed, though he was wont to charm himself with the flattering notion that his love for Sibylla had died out, or near upon it, he was very far off the point when he could think any ill of Sibylla.
“My patients will be foaming,” remarked Jan, who continued his way to Verner’s Pride with Lionel. “They will conclude I have gone off with Dr. West; and I have his list on my hands now, as well as my own. I say, Lionel, when I told you the letters from Australia were in, how little we guessed they would contain this news.”
“Little, indeed!” said Lionel.
“I suppose you won’t go to London now?”
“I suppose not,” was the reply of Lionel; and a rush of gladness illumined his heart as he spoke it. No more toil over those dry old law books! The study had never been to his taste.
The servants were gathered in the hall when Lionel and Jan entered it. Decorously sorry, of course, for the tidings which had arrived, but unable to conceal the inward satisfaction which peeped out — not satisfaction at the death of Fred, but at the accession of Lionel. It is curious to observe how jealous the old retainers of a family are, upon all points which touch the honour or the well-being of the house. Fred Massingbird was an alien; Lionel was a Verner; and now, as Lionel entered, they formed into a double line that he might pass between them, their master from henceforth.
Mrs. Verner was in the old place, the study. Jan had seen her in bed that morning; but, since then, she had risen. Early as the hour yet was, recent as the sad news had been, Mrs. Verner had dropped asleep. She sat nodding in her chair, snoring heavily, breathing painfully, her neck and face all one colour — carmine red. That she looked — as Jan had observed — a very apoplectic subject, struck Lionel most particularly on this morning.
“Why don’t you bleed her, Jan?” he whispered.
“She won’t be bled,” responded Jan. “She won’t take physic. She won’t do anything that she ought to do. You may as well talk to a post. She’ll do nothing but eat and drink, and fall asleep afterwards, and then wake up to eat and drink and fall asleep again. Mrs. Verner” — exalting his voice— “here’s Lionel.”
Mrs. Verner partially woke up. Her eyes opened sufficiently to observe Jan; and her mind apparently grew awake to a confused remembrance of facts. “He’s gone to London,” said she to Jan. “You won’t catch him:” and then she nodded again.
“I did catch him,” shouted Jan. “Lionel’s here.”
Lionel sat down by her, and she woke up pretty fully.
“I am grieved at this news for your sake, Mrs. Verner,” he said in a kind tone, as he took her hand. “I am sorry for Frederick.”
“Both my boys gone before me, Lionel!” she cried, melting into tears— “John first; Fred next. Why did they go out there to die?”
“It is indeed sad for you,” replied Lionel. “Jan says Fred died of fever.”
“He has died of fever. Don’t you remember when Sibylla wrote, she said he was ill with fever? He never got well. He never got well! I take it that it must have been a sort of intermittent fever — pretty well one day, down ill the next — for he had started for the place where John died — I forget its name, but you’ll find it written there. Only a few hours after quitting Melbourne, he grew worse and died.”
“Was he alone?” asked Lionel.
“Captain Cannonby was with him. They were going together up to — I forget, I say, the name of the place — where John died, you know. It was nine or ten days’ distance from Melbourne, and they had travelled but a day of it. And I suppose,” added Mrs. Verner, with tears in her eyes, “that he’d be put into the ground like a dog!”
Lionel, on this score, could give no consolation. He knew not whether the fact might be so, or not. Jan hoisted himself on to the top of a high bureau, and sat in comfort.
“He’d be buried like a dog,” repeated Mrs. Verner. “What do they know about parsons and consecrated ground out there? Cannonby buried him, he says, and then he went back to Melbourne to carry the tidings to Sibylla.”
“Sibylla? Was Sibylla not with him when he died?” exclaimed Lionel.
“It seems not. It’s sure not, in fact, by the letters. You can read them, Lionel. There’s one from her and one from Captain Cannonby.”
“It’s not likely they’d drag Sibylla up to the diggings,” interposed Jan.
“And yet almost as unlikely that her husband would leave her alone in such a place as Melbourne appears to be,” dissented Lionel.
“She was not left alone,” said Mrs. Verner. “If you’d read the letters, Lionel, you would see. She stayed in Melbourne with a family: friends, I think she says, of Captain Cannonby’s. She has written for money to be sent out to her by the first ship, that she may pay her passage home again.”
This item of intelligence astonished Lionel more than any other.
“Written for money to be sent out for her passage home!” he reiterated. “Has she no money?”
Mrs. Verner looked at him. “They accuse me of forgetting things in my sleep, Lionel; but I think you must be growing worse than I am. Poor Fred told us in his last letter that he had been robbed of his desk, and that it had got his money in it.”
“But I did not suppose it contained all — that they were reduced so low as for his wife to have no money left for a passage. What will she do there until some can be got out?”
“If she is with comfortable folks, they’d not turn her out,” cried Jan.
Lionel took up the letters, and ran his eyes over them. They told him little else of the facts; though more of the details. It appeared to have taken place pretty much as Mrs. Verner said. The closing part of Sibylla’s letter ran as follows: —
“After we wrote to you, Fred met Captain Cannonby. You must remember, dear aunt, how often Fred would speak of him. Captain Cannonby has relatives out here, people in very good position — if people can be said to be in a position at all in such a horrid place. We knew Captain Cannonby had come over, but thought he was at the Bendigo diggings. However, Fred met him; and he was very civil and obliging. He got us apartments in the best hotel — one of the very places that had refused us, saying they were crowded. Fred seemed to grow a trifle better, and it was decided that they should go to the place where John died, and try to get particulars about his money, etc., which in Melbourne we could hear nothing of. Indeed, nobody seemed to know even John’s name. Captain Cannonb
y (who has really made money here in some way — trading, he says — and expects to make a good deal more) agreed to go with Fred. Then Fred told me of the loss of his desk and money, his bills of credit, and that; whatever the term may be. It was stolen from the quay, the day we arrived, and he had never been able to hear of it; but, while there seemed a chance of finding it, he would not let me know the ill news. Of course, with this loss upon us, there was all the more necessity for our getting John’s money as speedily as might be. Captain Cannonby introduced me to his relatives, the Eyres, told them my husband wanted to go up the country for a short while, and they invited me to stay with them. And here I am, and very kind they are to me in this dreadful trouble.
“Aunt Verner, I thought I should have died when, a day or two after they started, I saw Captain Cannonby come back alone, with a long, sorrowful face. I seemed to know in a moment what had happened; I had thought at the time they started that Fred was too ill to go. I said to him, ‘My husband is dead!’ and he confessed that it was so. He had been taken ill at the end of the first day, and did not live many hours.
“I can’t tell you any more, dear Aunt Verner; I am too sick and ill, and if I filled ten sheets with the particulars, it would not alter the dreadful facts. I want to come home to you; I know you will receive me, and let me live with you always. I have not any money. Please send me out sufficient to bring me home by the first ship that sails. I don’t care for any of the things we brought out; they may stop here or be lost in the sea, for all the difference it will make to me: I only want to come home. Captain Cannonby says he will take upon himself now to look after John’s money, and transmit it to us, if he can get it.
“Mrs. Eyre has just come in. She desires me to say that they are taking every care of me, and are all happy to have me with them: she says I am to tell you that her own daughters are about my age. It is all true, dear aunt, and they are exceedingly kind to me. They seem to have plenty of money, are intimate with the governor’s family, and with what they call the good society of the colony. When I think what my position would have been now had I not met with them, I grow quite frightened.